Here is a link to a very thoughtful, well-written item I saw this morning by Rob Paterson on The FASTForward blog. He opens with this:

Why is collaboration so hard in organizations? Every organization that I know tells me that it is hard. Hard - all but impossible! Why? Why? Can Social Media help improve collaboration? I have had no success with just the introduction of the technology. Is there something missing?

Mr. Paterson then offers the start of a very interesting discourse on the importance of context in the succesful adaptation of new technology. I think he's quite right. But I don't have a high enough IQ to further the discussion at his level. Alternatively, however, I can offer my much more visceral impression about why so many otherwise intelligent and well-run corporations are reluctant to embrace the new social media technology, for collaboration or any other pursuit. 

1. Fear. Implied in social media marketing and communications strategies is a loss of message control.

2. Lack of knowledge: Never having actually created a blog, wiki, collaborative site or other online community, the corporation doesn't know the first thing about how it is done.

3. Bad Advice: The people that corporations turn to first for advice about marketing, messaging, and communications – their traditional, establishment, mainstream PR agencies, for example — have a vested interest in the status quo. After all, if you make your living doing media relations, any substitute technology that sidesteps the old media is a threat to the existence of your establishment world. This is especially true since the new social media technologies are wickedly cost-effective, inexpensive to acquire, rapidly implemented, and easy to drive without wordsmiths, lawyers, and marketing mavens ten deep left and right and all around.

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